Wednesday, October 26, 2016

This is the Green Door Tavern and was the last stop on our Sunday pub crawl. It was an interesting neighborhood bar. It interested me because of the doorway leading into the bar. You can see there's two doors, an exterior door and then another to get into the bar as you can see on the left. However, the wall and the door jam for the interior door are tilted like they are about to fall over. Hopefully it won't and obviously it didn't while we were there!

Friday, October 21, 2016

After the architectural tour and our pit stop at Harry Caray's to watch football and consume adult beverages, Eileen and I took a walk to the end of the Navy Pier to see if we could get some photos of the sailboats moving around on Lake Michigan. The idea was to get a nice shot that we could put in the water closet of our newly remodeled master bath. This is the one that turned out the best and we're gonna try getting a print of it on either metal or glass. Hopefully it will work!

Thursday, October 20, 2016

This is the second picture from the same sequence of shots during one pitch. I put the first one out there just on Facebook and Instagram, but after further review, Arrieta was a bit blurry due to a slow shutter speed. Me being a bonehead forgot to switch to shutter priority and bang the speed up to 1/750 or 1/1000 which works better for sports. However, in this shot he's not moving real fast as he is at the top of the pitch. Gotta remember that shutter-priority versus aperture-priority bit when it comes to sports!

Monday, October 17, 2016

We did do more in Chicago besides seeing a Cubs game and looking at buildings; we also went to a Bears football game! It was fun, but the Bears got trounced 29-14, if I remember correctly. Plus, our seats kinda sucked... The seats were good as far as seeing the field from the end-zone, but they sucked because they were right outside the tunnel where people would go to get refreshments or take bathroom breaks. We sat just above the steps for it so whenever anyone came and went, they would block our view as they went up and down the steps. And when people are drinking beer, guess how often they go up and down the stairs?

Prior to the game, I took this pano as the sun was setting. It turned out pretty nicely, I think. As I put this pano together, I learned that Photoshop does a better job at panoramas than Lightroom does. When I merged the photos for this shot in Lightroom, no matter what combination of photos I tried, the word "CHICAGO" in the near end-zone always seems to be missing a letter. Plus, the the near sides of the upper decks of the stadium were misaligned as well. Using the same images in Photoshop on the other hand, for the most part, everything turned out great!

Friday, October 14, 2016

Across N. Sheffield Ave at the backside of Wrigley, there are several apartment buildings. Back in the 1980's (I think) when Harry Caray used to broadcast the games, he would likely point out the rooftops of those apartments as there would usually be a couple of guys sitting up there in lawn-chairs with a cooler of beer watching the games. Over the years it has evolved from lawn chairs on regular flat roofs into stadium seating. You know what happens when there's money to be made, right?! Anyway, the lower half of the picture are the actual bleachers (and the "bleacher bums") in right field of Wrigley, whereas above the WrigleyRooftops.com signs are the seats and bleachers that are on the different apartment buildings across the street.

I selected the black and white conversion because of the timelessness of black and white. The shot originally used the classic chrome film simulation from the camera which I therefore converted to black and white in Nik Silver Efex 2.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

The Cubs made it to the National League Championship Series! YES!!! Let's hope they beat the snot out of either the Dodgers or the Nats. We'll find out who the Cubs will play tonight! When the Cubs do play whoever, gotta pray they do a lot of what Dexter Fowler is doing in this picture.

This was shot in the bottom of the first inning against the St Louis Cardinals on Sept. 23d, 2016. Dexter Fowler scores on a wild pitch as Anthony Rizzo (bat in hand) watches with Cardinals pitcher Mike Leake in between trying to cover home plate. Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina chases the ball and Matt Adams tries to cover as well coming in from first base. Cubs ultimately won 5-0!

Shot is a jpg straight from camera using classic chrome film simulation, cropped to get rid of distractions and a little added vignette in LR.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Our place in Andersonville was a little ways away from downtown Chicago, but we could still see parts of the city when we peered through our neighbor's deck. You can see the Willis Tower (aka Sears Tower) off in the distance.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

It only makes sense to post a picture from the Cubs game we went to since the Cubs are now in the playoffs. This shot here shows last year's National League Rookie of the Year and 2015 All Star, Kris Bryant batting against the St Louis Cardinals. The kid is awesome and is a big reason the Cubs have the best record in baseball. Let's hope they can break the curse this year and win the series!

We love going to these old ball parks. There's an intimacy, history and character to them that you just can't get at the newer ballparks, even if the new ones are so fan-friendly. Baseball is a sport that just seems to be better played and watched in these old stadiums. You can sort of feel the ghosts of baseball-past while sitting in the seats wondering what it must've been like 100 years ago. Drinking a beer and eating a hot dog and shelled peanuts is a great way to spend a Friday afternoon. Ferris Bueller knew what he was doing when he skipped school.

As far as the technical side of this shot goes, this is straight from the Fuji using the classic chrome setting with only a little spot healing from the Photoshop Fix app on the iPad. Otherwise, this is straight from the camera!

Friday, October 7, 2016

We took an impromptu architectural tour from the Navy Pier before our pub crawl on our first full day in Chicago. Oh and thanks again, Valerie, for paying for my ticket! The tour was via riverboat through downtown. Two of the cool buildings we saw were the Willis Tower on the left (to me it will always be the Sears Tower) and 311 South Wacker Dr., the building on the right. Yes, that building is only known by its address. For you Texans out there, the 311 S Wacker building is made from pink granite from Texas. Also, that building is not as tall as the Sears/Willis Tower, but because of the angle of this shot, it looks that way.. You can read more about it here.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

I'm finally getting around to editing some of the shots I took during our trip to Chicago a couple of weeks ago. The first of those is this skyline shot here taken from the Signature Lounge atop the Hancock Building on the 96th floor! Awesome views from up there! The only weird thing though was that on the other side of the windows were tons of spiders and spider webs - 96 floors up! That's a whole lot of climbing for those guys.. To try to combat that, I opened up the aperture all the way to blur out everything close to the lens. But, the sky has some blotches in it that I can seem to make heads or tails of.. Sorry about that. Otherwise, I like the shot and I hope you do, too!